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Saturday, April 21, 2012

中文 - Week 21 (New Practical Chinese Reader 1)

The book I am using is New Practical Chinese Reader 1by
theBeijing Language and Culture University Press. Volume 1 of the book has 14 lessons.
Target end date is June 10, 2012.

MONDAY: Lesson Eleven –我会说一点儿汉语

Let us first tackle this high
frequency expression 一点儿. The book says that it is an
indefinite measure word used to modify a noun. You could roughly translate it
as a little. You could get rid of the first character if the
expression does not come at the beginning of a sentence. So the next time you
want to be modest and try to downplay your fluency in Mandarin, add this
expression.

TUESDAY: Lesson Eleven –我会说一点儿汉语

Another way of being modest is to
negate what the other person is saying but you do not do the negation as you
would an ordinary statement. In this case you have to use 哪里which is an alternate for 哪儿. Yes, we know this as the question
word for where but in Mandarin they also use this as an expression of modesty when
you just got praised. So if some say that your Mandarin is good you could use
this expression as a reply.

WEDNESDAY: Lesson Eleven –我会说一点儿汉语

We use 还to indicate that an action is still on-going. You just put it in front of the
verb.

THURSDAY: Lesson Eleven –我会说一点儿汉语

We
already know how to ask for someone’s age but
the book gives us another option which is more polite and goes like您今天多大岁数?
Literally, this translates to How big is your age this year. I don’t even know
if my translation is correct but I think you get my point.

FRIDAY: Lesson Eleven –我会说一点儿汉语

I am only including this because it is
a favorite expression: 学英语不容易. I substitute “English” with “Chinese”
though. HAHAHA. Studying English is not easy.

For
next week I will still be covering lesson eleven. We are making progress!
The goal is to pass the lowest level of the HSK in June 2012! =)